My new Mac Pro is coming - Need your advice!

Well, I just pulled the trigger and ordered a new 2.8 GB 8-core Mac Pro. I'm stoked, of course, but I have a technical question in the order of "Which (should come) came first, the chicken or the egg"?

Here's my scenario: I ordered the Mac Pro with the stock (slow) 320 GB Hard Drive. I have also ordered - after much deliberation and opinion-gathering regarding Seagates (which I've always used in the past and Western Digital (which I've never used) - two Western Digital RE2 750 GB hard drives. Now, my thinking is, I want to prep my 160 GB boot drive from my G5 2.0GH dualie (running 10.5.2) by performing all schedule maintenance with OnyX, repair permissions, etc. Then I intend to use Carbon Copy Cloner to do a complete backup to my other internal 160 GB I'll call "160 GB BU".

Now my goal is to install the two 750 GB hard drives in the Mac Pro. Then remove the 160 GB hard drive from the G5 and put it into the Mac Pro temporarily, filling all bays. I would then first use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a complete backup from the 320 GB drive that Apple has installed and copy it over to one of the the 750 GB drives to use as my new boot drive.

Now, here's my question. I want to use Migration Assistant to merge my current data on the to-be-backed-up 160 GB BU drive from my G5 onto my boot drive. Should I first, a) use Migration Asst. to update the 320 GB drive then CCC to copy the merged contents to the clean, new 750 GB new boot drive on the Mac Pro or, b) use CCC to copy the 320 GB contents to the clean, new 750 GB new boot drive THEN use Migration Asst. to merge the contents of the 160 GB BU drive to the 750 GB new boot drive? Is there a preferred sequence I should follow or is either path equally appropriate? Or, is there a better way you know of?

I doubt that the 160GB drive from your G5 is SATA. So it's probably a no go in the MP.

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That'd be the first thing to make sure of in all your calculations - is your G5 drive SATA or Ultra ATA or what? I was going to use my 500 GB drive from my old Mac, but duh... forgot that it was EIDE. So, I ordered another 750 SATA from a popular online joint.

You could always get an external enclosure for your old HD... I've made a couple that way and they work really well.

Whoa. I just checked my G5 and it does, indeed, use SATA for the hard disk.

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In that case, OP, I think you're free to rock and roll. As for your original question, I think it sounds like a lot of work, but can't speak as to what might be a better solution. I'm too tired and my coffee is cold. I avoided the Migration Assistant altogether because I wanted to keep things lean on the new machine. I was doing clean installs of new software & such that wouldn't have run on my old Mac and I just manually configured Mail & such. Altogether (with system updates (don't forget the Leopard Graphics Update after going to 10.5.2!) and application updates (CS3 Production Premium)) it only took about 4 hours from plugging in my new MP to finish. Then another half-hour to add a couple of drives and 8 GB of memory. Rather quick, I thought.

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